Dead Zones and Alien Invasions
by nanayoung
Summary: Wheatley knows alot more than most would expect. Chell is a bit more mischievous than most would think. Two changes. A test subject and an AI, both wanting to experience more in life and willing to do anything to do it. What will happen when the human and the AI meet? GLaDOS won't know what hit her, and the universe will never be the same.
1. Not My Fault!

**Not My Fault!**

To this day, Wheatley swore that it wasn't his fault.

And he wasn't lying. He had made, _a lot_ of mistakes in his time, but he had always made sure to own up to them, ya know? Because if you're gonna make a mistake, the least you can do is accept it and say sorry in the end, if not for you then for the people you wronged. And even though he could act like a right idiot and mess things up at times, if there was one thing he knew what to do, it was accept his faults. Because lying to yourself would only bugger you up in the long run and he really didn't need to be any more messed up than he already was.

And why does everyone just _assume _that everything is his fault anyway? He doesn't always mess things up. Sure a mistake here and there, but nothing on this scale!

How the bloody hell would he even go about blowing up the entire facility? It survived the apocalypse for God's sake, how can a tiny personality core be capable of blowing it up?

No, it most definitely was not his fault.

_Really_.

* * *

**Okay, this is just the introduction of my story, the real stuff will be coming next chapter. **

**Review and tell me what you think.**


	2. Wheatley's Days

**Wheatley's Days **

By himself, in a broken down facility with nothing but deffective turrets, a bunch of weighted cubes, and the broken down corpse of _Her_, for centuries on end made him a bit loopy, he was willing to admit.

Granted it could have been worse. Though he might not have been as advanced as most of the AIs in this place, he was still advanced enough to steal an internet connection and permenately install it to his core. Playing online games, watching videos, and listening to the news was the only thing that kept him from going completely mad these days.

Though, there wasn't much input from the humans ever since the apocalypse happened.

He always thought it would be zombies, not aliens. Zombies were very durable things, while aliens seemed to be just as squishy and vulnderable as humans, possibly even more so.

Though, what few pictures he had managed to see from the surface indicated that these aliens weren't that squishy at all. Seemed like a rather nasty lot, almost animalistic. Which puzzled him; the humans were a resilent and violent bunch, so how had they fallen to a bunch of alien animals? Maybe they had been caught by surprise? The news reports he watched didn't shed too much light on the subject, though the government files he hacked into did explain some things.

Leave it to the humans to open up an alternate dimension full of bloodthirsty aliens. While he didn't have much against humans as a whole, he found over time that they had this odd curiousity that _really _seemed to get them in trouble. It was as if they just didn't know when to stop pushing the envelope, you know? They kept poking at things that they _really _should have stopped poking at.

Even he knew when to let things go at times, honestly.

Take the humans in his care for example. Dozens of them ended up dying in order to satisfy their own curiousity despite his protests. Some of them had fallen in the death traps, others had come across some defective turrents that still had amunition, some ended up misusing the equipment and injuring themselves, others blew themselves up when coming in contact with certain chemicals or weaponry...

Wheatley had even remembered one particularly... _slow_ human who ended up electrocuting herself when she kept pulling levers in the testing room, trying to find the escape pod, even though he told her multiple times _not to touch anything_. The daft woman ended up partly waking _Her_ in the process, and it was only thanks to his desparate manhandling of the switches that he managed to turn _Her_ off before she could wake long enough to take control of the facility.

Nasty piece of work _She _was. He really didn't know what those old men were thinking, making something as mad as her.

Though _She_ wasn't always like this. He remembered a time where _She_ was just like any other normal AI, all stiff and monotone with little to no emotion. But then the old foggies put _Her_ into the facility control intelligence body and it was as if a switch had been flipped. _She _became less and less apathic and more and more sadistic. _She _cared less for the wellbeing of the subjects like _She _was programmed to and started coming up with all sorts of impossible tests filled with dangerous traps. _She _became obsessed with science and testing, to the point where _She _started sacrificing subject after subject in order to prove some twisted theory of hers.

Got to the point where he started feeling sorry for the poor sods, and tried to help them out whenever he could. Granted, not all of his plans succeeded and more than one subject ended up dead because of his advice, but it was the thought that counted right?

Apparently _She_ thought so too, because _She_ ended up shutting him down. He ended up waking a few years later after _She _got destroyed. By a _test subject_ of all things. A _human _test subject, who used nothing but that gun that made orange and blue holes everywhere. Wheatley would have loved to meet the guy, maybe give him a slice of cake or something. God knows he earned it, after having to deal with _Her_. But the test subject left, leaving a dead psychotic AI, a bunch of turrents, and him in a broken down facility.

Would have loved to leave as well, but the scientists told him that if he left his Management Rail, he would die. Said the same thing for the flashlight as well. And a bunch of other stuff too. They told him that for _everything_.

Honestly, he didn't know why they gave him this stuff if they didn't want him to use it. It's pointless. Mad.

So he stayed at the facility for a few years. Watching over the subjects, talking with some of the defective turrents, looking over all the corridors and hallways. This was before he had internet you see, so everything was utterly boring and repetative.

So he tried to waste time by trying to keep track and memorize the endless loops of hallways, death traps, and testing centers.

Go down this hallway...

...end up in this death trap...

...go over the acid pit...

...wave at the defective turrets shooting at nothing...

...past the elevator...

...up the stairs...

...and so on.

For extra challenge, he would sometimes turn off his memory component- the thing that allowed him to remember everything- and try to find his way to and from different hallways without added help.

Other than improving his memory a bit, it just added to the repetativeness of his life and made him bored all over again.

Then the first human awoke from their cryosleep and suddenly he wasn't bored anymore.

At the time, he was really excited. There's only so much memorizing you can take before you go utterly mad from isolation. He even thought faintly of escaping, of getting out of this bloody facility once and for all. He'd never seen outside before, and he always wondered what it looked like up there, in a human's natural habitat.

He grew more and more excited at the thought of getting out, to the point that he was literally shaking in his rail.

One of the scientists mentioned something called Christmas once. He thought this must be what it feels like.

Then the cryotube opened up, the human took his first few steps, and Wheatley got a good look at his new escape companion.

Now from what he understood, humans need their brains to be in tip top condition in order to think and function. So even the tiniest amount of damage to the brain can really, really hurt humans beyond repair, especially if they're not fixed in time.

Apparently months of extended exposure to cryosleep can cause _severe _brain damage.

And considering that most of these humans have been in suspension for years at a time, well...

The first human that came out of the cryosleep was a drooling, slobbering mess. Sort of like a toddler, only adult sized. And though babies managed to make the sobbing drooling thing look cute, it was not so for a grown human male.

It looked kind of sad really.

Wheatley would have felt sorry for the poor sod had he not pooped his pants.

The smell of escriment wasn't the worst thing he had ever smelled (the smell of rotting corpses took first place), but it was certainly one of the top five reasons why he hated the scientists for giving him a sense of smell.

Honestly, why would you give an AI a sense of smell in the first place? Makes absolutely no sense.

The human didn't seem bothered by the horrible smell coming from his trousers though. Maybe he lost his sense of smell along with the brain damage?

Poor guy. Went bloody mad because of brain damage and now can't smell that he pooped his pants. All he needed to do in order to complete the rather pathetic picture would be to pick his no-

-aaaaaaaaaaaand there he goes. Digging for gold right there. Really disgusting. Really disgusting mate.

The human would not be able to get past the hallway without tripping over himself, let alone all the death traps.

And sure enough, the human ended up tumbling head first down a flight of stairs after tripping over his own shoelaces.

Tragic, just tragic. _I knew thee well... random brain damaged human. Rest in peace and all that. _

The next human came a few days later, which was surprising. He thought he would have to wait a few years between every awakening. And with over ten thousand humans in cryosleep that would have surely taken a long long time.

This one was also male and thankfully didn't have brain damage. He was twitching alot though and kept rubbing his arms and glancing side to side. He had dark greyish lines under his bloodshot, dilated eyes, which was supposed to mean he needed sleep. But that was ridculous since he'd already been asleep for several years.

A fact the human didn't really take so well, if his fevered cursing and screaming told him anything.

Trying to calm the human down only made things worse as he ended up raising himself high on his rail out of reach while the mad human started throwing things at him, yelling and cursing the entire time.

It was really amazing how creative some humans were. He didn't even know what half that stuff meant.

Talking to the human eventually proved futile, and only made him angrier. Apparently, the human thought to blame him for putting him in cryosleep, which was honestly rubbish since he wasn't in charge of chosing test subjects, _She _was. He tried to tell the human this, but he refused to listen to him, and continued to ignore him right up until he told him that he was going to escape through the sewage line.

It took Wheatley a few minutes for him to realize that the human meant the acid pit, but by that point it was far too late. Poor guy. Might have had a slight anger problem but he didn't deserve that.

A week later an entire group of humans managed to awake from their suspension right around the same time. There were four males, three Caucasian and one of African decent. Two females, one of Japanese and one of Chinese decent. None of them seemed to be brain damaged or overly angry like the last two, though the big blond one looked like he had a headache, since their seemed to be a huge vein in his head that pulsed everytime he clenched his teeth.

Once he got to talk to them, they were pretty professional towards him, though the blond one took a swing at him and had to be held back when he told them how long they'd been in the chambers. There was a lot of arguing between them. Didn't help when one of the human females started crying.

Took a lot of convincing but he managed to get them to follow him. He even got the black human male to agree to get him out too if he showed them the way.

But then he accidentally led them to a wrong turn, and they were shot to death by the defective turret robots.

Yeah... not a good way to go. That was his bad. Had to take responsibility for that one.

It... didn't exactly help that the next few subjects ended up dying the exact same way. Guess he didn't know the facility as well as he thought. Again, entirely his bad.

After another long stream of failures ending with each test subject's demise, Wheatley decided that he needed to know the facility better. Obviously, remembering which corridor goes to which hallway wasn't enough.

Nope, now he needed to know everything. Which hallways had death traps and which didn't. Which rooms were testing rooms and which weren't. What each elevator led to and whether or not the floor would be able to handle excess weight or not, and so on and so forth. If he wanted to get out of here, then the test subjects needed to come out of this alive. And the only way that could happen is if he could carefully guide them to the exits without them dying.

Which is how he found the Dead Zones.

Well, they weren't _originally _called the Dead Zones, but the name really seemed to fit since they were a literal Dead Zone for AIs. As in, he could not see them or sense them _at all_. And for no apparent reason.

It was really weird too, because he would find himself looking at a storage closet or a small space in between a room or something and his eye would just... trail off it. It was kind of hard to explain. It was like his core honestly though there was nothing there. Wheatley knew there was something there, but it was as if his programming was screaming at him, telling him that no, there really was nothing there and look at that compainion cube over there isn't that more interesting to look at and what storage closet, there is no storage closet and aren't you being silly?

It never occured to him that something was wrong until one of the test subjects-who was running from a bunch of turrets headed his way- seemed to disappear into thin air.

Wheatley called out to him for five minutes after the turrets left before the human seemed to appear right in front of him.

Apparently _he_ had been calling for the AI's attention too, which was pretty bloody interesting since it meant that AIs couldn't hear anything while in these dead spots either. Which of course was really bad since he needed to be able to see the subjects in order to help them get out.

Granted, theer weren't that many Dead Zones in the facility, only ten or so, but it really irritated him when the humans hid and he couldn't find them. Since they never really knew their way around the facility, it usually meant that they died faster, which meant he lost another chance at freedom.

It didn't help that many of the subjects seemed determined to find their own way out, and rejected most of his help since, apparently he was annoying. He didn't see how. All he did was strike up a conversation with the humans after they woke from cyrosleep. Granted he was kind of a chatterbox (sphere?) at times, but it was only because he rarely had company, even with the sudden rush of humans awaking from suspension.

Though there was some company he could do without...

Not all of the subjects were _entirely _friendly. Wheatley had lost track of the many times he had been threatened by one of the subjects. One even tried to kill him at one point, and actually jumped on his rail. Literally, jumped, and tied to pry him off. The AI managed to shake him off in the end, but almost suffered from a heart attack in the process. And he didn't even know AIs could have heart attacks.

There were also lags in between some of the awkenings. Sometimes it was days, sometimes it was weeks or months. At one point he went a few _decades _between the next awakening, bringing back that all too familiar boredom.

He began recalling something that one of the subjects said, something about WiFi and internet and how you can find the proper hotspot in order to connect with the internet.

Even though he was a literal living computer, he had never realy been on the internet before, though he did hear about it more than once. Apparently these "hotspots" can be found just about anywhere. So he decided to search for one of these WiFi hotspots in order to get connected to the internet.

It was much easier than he though it would be. A little bit of hacking here and there, as well as a few personal adjustments allowed his core to connect to the internet.

And just like that, he wasn't bored anymore.

The Internet, he decided, was the humans' greatest invention.

Well, after him of course.

There were so many things to learn about and see. The information about the entire world was at his fingertips; videos, movies, stories, history; there was so much to read and watch and he didn't even leave to leave the facility!

Boredom was pretty much gone at that point. Which is why he sort of... lagged on his human duties.

To be fair, it wasn't as if it was that big of a change in the end. Yes, the subjects were dying but they were already dying while in his care, only this time they were dying because of their own stupidity and not his.

Terrible he knew, but at least they got a fighting chance without him bollocking everything up.

It's not as if he stopped helping all together. Once the euphoria wore off, he stil wanted to escape the facility and tried to help the subjects as best he could. A few even managed to escape, but were usually unable to take him with them for one reason or another, mostly because they were unable to lug the huge rail with them to their escape.

Which was kind of a let down, that.

Centuries passed. Subjects either died or escaped without him. Read about the end of the world on a news sight. Traveled from corridor to corridor. Rinse and repeat.

It became the status quo, a rutine. He begane to finally accept the fact that he was not leaving this place.

Then, the facility exploded.

And it was not Wheatley's fault.


End file.
